Couples Therapy: ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ Sneak Peek Shows Donald Glover and Maya Erskine Executing the Perfect Marriage
The couple that slays together, stays together.
Or the sneak peek at Prime’s new series Mr. and Mrs. Smith would have you believe. Prime released a sizzle reel of its upcoming shows giving us our first look at Donald Glover (Atlanta) and Maya Erskine (Pen 15) as the titular married assassins.
Amazon’s logline for the show doesn’t say much: “(John and Jane Smith) enter into a new phase of their marriage when they agree to work as spies for a mysterious agency.”
The series is based on the 2005 film by Doug Liman that starred the then-unmarried Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The film about married assassins hired to kill each other turned out to be a huge box office hit, grossing $487 million against a $110 million budget, and a bad thing for Pitt’s marriage to Jennifer Aniston.
Erskine stepped into the role after Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who had been working with Glover as a co-creator of the project, stepped down due to creative differences.
The trailer’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith footage begins at the 1:10 mark, and shows the couple looking nonchalant in a packed elevator, before Mr. Smith (Glover) asks Mrs. Smith (Erskine), “You ever kill anyone?” She slyly responds, “Do I look like I have?”
There are also a few shots of Erskine walking away from an explosion, the two of them running for their lives in the street, and Erskine loading a very large gun. The last shot is of the couple sharing a quiet moment on a park bench, as Glover sarcastically says, “This marriage is starting off on a great foot.”
The rest of the trailer shows premiering on the streaming platform include The Boys spin-off Gen V (coming in September) existing shows returning for a new season like Good Omens (July), The Summer I Turned Pretty (July), The Wheel of Time (September), and Reacher (December).
New movies include the Jamie Foxx legal drama The Burial (October), Bad Bunny’s luchador movie Cassandro (September), Eddie Murphy’s family-friendly holiday comedy Candy Cane Lane (November), queer rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue (August).
The ensemble cast includes Michaela Coel, Parker Posey, Wagner Moura, Paul Dano, and John Turturro and is co-created and co-executive-produced by Glover and Francesca Sloane.
The show is set to debut in November. No word on whether the streaming offerings mentioned here will be one of many shows and movies affected by the newly-announced SAG-AFTRA strike.